Paperboy

Paperboy is an AI-agent startup discussed in 人类和 AI Agent 的最佳配合方式，还没被发明｜对谈 Paperboy. Founder Jiang Yang and founding engineer Jie Dechen describe it as an attempt to find a better form of Human-Agent Collaboration than chat boxes, one-off prompts, and session-based agent products. Its product thesis is that agents should learn from OS-Level Context, build Persistent Agent Memory, and become useful through Proactive Agents that work in the user’s existing environment.

Product Direction

• Early ideas included an “AI Slack,” but the team moved away from directly replacing Slack because enterprise switching, connectors, integrations, and network effects are hard.
• Current directions include meeting prep, OS-wide autocomplete, commit messages, PR descriptions, recruiting support, efficiency review, and research synthesis.
• The interface direction shifted from sidebar modules for specific ICPs to an IM/inbox-like layer, because IM already organizes people, groups, and topics without forcing a fixed task taxonomy.
• The company sees OpenAI and Anthropic as the most important competitive forces, while hoping to differentiate through product taste, interface exploration, and user adaptation.

Connections

• Jiang Yang and Jie Dechen — founder and founding engineer interviewed in the source.
• Agentic Workflow, Context Engineering, and Agent-Facing Interfaces — broader workflow and interface concepts Paperboy extends.
• Digital Employees — adjacent enterprise concept for agents that need onboarding, permissions, role boundaries, and management.
• Cursor, Codex, Claude Code, and Manus — agent products used as reference points in the discussion.